Chapter 4

Primary Industries: Agriculture

  • In His first words to Adam, the Lord gave him an order, or mandate, to subdue the earth. The dominion mandate required Adam and his descendants to study the earth and to use it wisely.
  • Primary industries are the most basic industries of all. They include agriculture and mining.
  • Farmers began applying science and machinery to increase their yield. Commercial farmers were able to raise large cash crops for profit.
  • Many nomads became raiders and conquerors, famous for their toughness and skill with horses. Among them were the Huns of Central Asia, the Sioux Indians of North America, and the Masai of East Africa.
  • Primary Industries: Fishing, Forestry, and Mining
  • Minerals—solid crystals that occur naturally and have a definite chemical composition
  • More iron is mined each year than all other metals combined.
  • Aluminum was once considered a precious stone because it was so difficult to separate out of its ore, bauxite.
  • Alloys—the process of combining metals
  • Steel is the world’s most important alloy.
  • Fertilizers (phosphates, nitrates, and potash) contain the most important nutrients that the soil needs—phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium.
  • Fossil fuels—coal, petroleum, and natural gas
  • Coal in now used to generate most of the world’s electricity.
  • Located in many underground oil pools is a fossil fuel in gaseous form called natural gas.

Secondary Industries

  • Secondary industries take raw materials (natural resources that have been extracted by primary industries) and change them into a useful form. There are two types of secondary industries: construction and manufacturing.
  • Manufacturing now refers to big businesses and machines that turn raw materials into new products.
  • This period of radical change is  known as the Industrial Revolution. It started in the textile industry of Britain.
  • Crude Oil—the dark liquid that comes out of the ground
  • Petrochemicals—plastics, synthetic rubber, fibers for textiles, dyes, medicines, fertilizers, paints, and perfumes

Tertiary Industries

  • Tertiary industries are sometimes called service industries because they produce services.
  • Services are intangible (not touchable) products, such as teaching, advertising, truck driving, and auto repair.
  • Infrastructure refers to the basic energy and equipment needs of all industries. There are there types of infrastructure: utilities, transportation, and communication.
  • Electricity is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh)—the amount of work done by one thousand watts in one hour.
  • Renewable Energy: Hydroelectricity, Biofuel, Geothermal, Solar, Wind
  • Sending messages through electronic impulses is called telecommunications. The three major modern telecommunications industries are telephone, radio, and television.
  • Wholesale businesses buy goods in large quantities from producers to sell in smaller quantities to other businesses.

The Wealth of Nations

  • Capital is the term for money.
  • Free market—businesses freely compete in the marketplace for buyers with little interference from the government
  • Under socialism, the government owns the major industries and promises to make production decisions for the welfare of society.
  • The most extreme form of socialism, called communism, the government owns everything.
  • The most common measurement of the wealth of nations is Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
  • The best measurement of production is per capita GDP (the average value of products produced by each person in the country).

The Wealth of Nations (cont.)

  • The effective use of raw materials, labor, and capital is called development.
  • The leaders of this Group of 7 (G-7) meet each year to resolve economic and political disputes. Members of the Group of 7 are developed countries.
  • The World Trade Organization (WTO), a permanent body with one representative for every nation, replaced GATT. Individual countries no longer had the final say in their trade policies. In essence, free trade turned into “managed fair trade” under the direction of international bureaucrats.
  • The world’s poorest countries—with a per capita GDP around $2,000 or less—belong in a separate category of “underdeveloped” or “least developed” countries.
  • Exports—primary and secondary goods shipped to other countries
  • Imports—all the goods received from other countries
  • Tariffs—are taxes on imports and exports
Slide 7

•The effective use of raw materials, labor, and capital is called development.
•The leaders of this Group of 7 (G-7) meet each year to resolve economic and political disputes. Members of the Group of 7 are developed countries.
•The World Trade Organization (WTO), a permanent body with one representative for every nation, replaced GATT. Individual countries no longer had the final say in their trade policies. In essence, free trade turned into “managed fair trade” under the direction of international bureaucrats.
•The world’s poorest countries—with a per capita GDP around $2,000 or less—belong in a separate category of “underdeveloped” or “least developed” countries.
•Exports—primary and secondary goods shipped to other countries
•Imports—all the goods received from other countries
•Tariffs—are taxes on imports and exports
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